Chapter III.
Robespierre - Out Of Work - General-In-Chief Of The Army Of The Interior
The favors granted Napoleon for his services at Toulon were extended
to his family. Madame Bonaparte was helped by the municipality of
Marseilles. Joseph was made commissioner of war. Lucien was joined to
the Army of Italy, and in the town where he was stationed became famous as
a popular orator - "little Robespierre," they called him. He began, too,
here to make love to his landlord's daughter, Christine Boyer, afterwards
his wife.
The outlook for the refugees seemed very good, and it was made still
brighter by the very particular friendship of the younger Robespierre for
Napoleon. This friendship was soon increased by the part Napoleon played
in a campaign of a month with the Army of Italy, when, largely by his
genius, the seaboard from Nice to Genoa was put into French power. If
this victory was much for the army and for Robespierre, it was more for
Napoleon. He looked from the Tende, and saw for the first time that in
Italy there was "a land for a conqueror." Robespierre wrote to his
brother, the real head of the government at the moment, that Napoleon
possessed "transcendent merit." He engaged him to draw up a plan for a
campaign against Piedmont, and sent him on a secret mission to Genoa. The
relations between the two young men were, in fact, very close, and,
considering the position of Robespierre the elder, the outlook for
Bonaparte was good.
That Bonaparte admired the powers of the elder Robespierre, is
unquestionable. He was sure that if he had "remained in power, he would
have reestablished order and law; the result would have been attained
without any shocks, because it would have come through the quiet exercise
of power." Nevertheless, it is certain that the young general was
unwilling to come into close contact with the Terrorist leader, as his
refusal of an offer to go to Paris to take the command of the garrison of
the city shows. No doubt his refusal was partly due to his ambition - he
thought the opening better where he was - and partly due, too, to his
dislike of the excesses which the government was practising. That he
never favored the policy of the Terrorists, all those who knew him
testify, and there are many stories of his efforts at this time to save
emigres and suspects from the violence of the rabid patriots; even to save
the English imprisoned at Toulon. He always remembered Robespierre the
younger with kindness, and when he was in power gave Charlotte Robespierre
a pension.
Things had begun to go well for Bonaparte. His poverty passed. If
his plan for an Italian campaign succeeded, he might even aspire to the
command of the army. His brothers received good positions. Joseph was
betrothed to Julie Clary, and life went gayly at Nice and Marseilles,
where Napoleon had about him many of his friends - Robespierre and his
sister; his own two pretty sisters; Marmont, and Junot, who was deeply in
love with Pauline. Suddenly all this hope and happiness were shattered.
On the 9th Thermidor Robespierre fell, and all who had favored him were
suspected, Napoleon among the rest. His secret mission to Genoa gave a
pretext for his arrest, and for thirteen days, in August, 1794, he was a
prisoner, but through his friends was liberated. Soon after his release,
came an appointment to join an expedition against Corsica. He set out,
but the undertaking was a failure, and the spring found him again without
a place.
In April, 1795, Napoleon received orders to join the Army of the
West. When he reached Paris he found that it was the infantry to which he
was assigned. Such a change was considered a disgrace in the army. He
refused to go. "A great many officers could command a brigade better than
I could," he wrote a friend, "but few could command the artillery so well.
I retire, satisfied that the injustice done to the service will be
sufficiently felt by those who know how to appreciate matters." But though
he might call himself "satisfied," his retirement was a most serious
affair for him. It was the collapse of what seemed to be a career, the
shutting of the gate he had worked so fiercely to open.
He must begin again, and he did not see how. A sort of despair
settled over him. "He declaimed against fate," says the Duchess
d'Abrantes. "I was idle and discontented," he says of himself. He went
to the theatre and sat sullen and inattentive through the gayest of plays.
"He had moments of fierce hilarity," says Bourrienne.
A pathetic distaste of effort came over him at times; he wanted to
settle. "If I could have that house," he said one day to Bourrienne,
pointing to an empty house near by, "with my friends and a cabriolet, I
should be the happiest of men." He clung to his friends with a sort of
desperation, and his letters to Joseph are touching in the extreme.
Love as well as failure caused his melancholy. All about him,
indeed, turned thoughts to marriage. Joseph was now married, and his
happiness made him envious. "What a lucky rascal Joseph is!" he said.
Junot, madly in love with Pauline, was with him. The two young men
wandered through the alleys of the Jardin des Plantes and discussed
Junot's passion. In listening to his friend, Napoleon thought of himself.
He had been attracted by Desiree Clary, Joseph's sister-in-law. Why not
try to win her? And he began to demand news of her from Joseph. Desiree
had asked for his portrait, and he wrote: "I shall have it taken for her;
you must give it to her, if she still wants it; if not, keep it yourself."
He was melancholy when he did not have news of her, accused Joseph of
purposely omitting her name from his letters, and Desiree herself of
forgetting him. At last he consulted Joseph: "If I remain here, it is
just possible that I might feel inclined to commit the folly of marrying.
I should be glad of a line from you on the subject. You might perhaps
speak to Eugenie's [Desiree's] brother, and let me know what he says, and
then it will be settled." He waited the answer to his overtures "with
impatience"; urged his brother to arrange things so that nothing "may
prevent that which I long for." But Desiree was obdurate. Later she
married Bernadotte and became Queen of Sweden.
Yet in these varying moods he was never idle. As three years before,
he and Bourrienne indulged in financial speculations; he tried to persuade
Joseph to invest his wife's dot in the property of the emigres. He
prepared memorials on the political disorders of the times and on military
questions, and he pushed his brothers as if he had no personal ambition.
He did not neglect to make friends either. The most important of those
whom he cultivated was Paul Barras, revolutionist, conventionalist, member
of the Directory, and one of the most influential men in Paris at that
moment. He had known Napoleon at Toulon, and showed himself disposed to
be friendly. "I attached myself to Barras," said Napoleon later, "because
I knew no one else. Robespierre was dead; Barras was playing a role: I
had to attach myself to somebody and something." One of his plans for
himself was to go to Turkey. For two or three years, in fact, Napoleon
had thought of the Orient as a possible field for his genius, and his
mother had often worried lest he should go. Just now it happened that the
Sultan of Turkey asked the French for aid in reorganizing his artillery
and perfecting the defences of his forts, and Napoleon asked to be allowed
to undertake the work. While pushing all his plans with extraordinary
enthusiasm, even writing Joseph almost daily letters about what he would
do for him when he was settled in the Orient, he was called to do a piece
of work which was to be of importance in his future.
The war committee needed plans for an Italian campaign; the head of
the committee was in great perplexity. Nobody knew anything about the
condition of things in the South. By chance, one day, one of Napoleon's
acquaintances heard of the difficulties and recommended the young general.
The memorial he prepared was so excellent that he was invited into the
topographical bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His knowledge,
sense, energy, fire, were so remarkable that he made strong friends and
became an important personage.
Such was the impression he made, that when in October, 1795, the
government was threatened by the revolting sections, Barras, the nominal
head of the defence, asked Napoleon to command the forces which protected
the Tuileries, where the Convention had gone into permanent session. He
hesitated for a moment. He had much sympathy for the sections. His
sagacity conquered. The Convention stood for the republic; an overthrow
now meant another proscription, more of the Terror, perhaps a royalist
succession, an English invasion.
"I accept," he said to Barras; "but I warn you that once my sword is
out of the scabbard I shall not replace it till I have established order."
It was on the night of 12th Vendemiaire that Napoleon was appointed.
With incredible rapidity he massed the men and cannon he could secure at
the openings into the palace and at the points of approach. He armed even
the members of the Convention as a reserve. When the sections marched
their men into the streets and upon the bridges leading to the Tuileries,
they were met by a fire which scattered them at once. That night Paris
was quiet. The next day Napoleon was made general of division. On
October 26th he was appointed general-in-chief of the Army of the
Interior.
At last the opportunity he had sought so long and so eagerly had
come. It was a proud position for a young man of twenty-six, and one may
well stop and ask how he had obtained it. The answer is not difficult for
one who, dismissing the prejudices and superstitions which have long
enveloped his name, studies his story as he would that of an unknown
individual. He had won his place as any poor and ambitious boy in any
country and in any age must win his - by hard work, by grasping at every
opportunity, by constant self-denial, by courage in every failure, by
springing to his feet after every fall.
He succeeded because he knew every detail of his business ("There is
nothing I cannot do for myself. If there is no one to make powder for the
cannon I can do it"); because neither ridicule nor coldness nor even the
black discouragement which made him write once to Joseph, "If this state
of things continues I shall end by not turning out of my path when a
carriage passes," could stop him; because he had profound faith in
himself. "Do these people imagine that I want their help to rise? They
will be too glad some day to accept mine. My sword is at my side, and I
will go far with it." That he had misrepresented conditions more than once
to secure favor, is true; but in doing this he had done simply what he saw
done all about him, what he had learned from his father, what the oblique
morality of the day justified. That he had shifted opinions and
allegiance, is equally true; but he who in the French Revolution did not
shift opinion was he who regarded "not what is, but what might be."
Certainly in no respect had he been worse than his environment, and in
many respects he had been far above it. He had struggled for place, not
that he might have ease, but that he might have an opportunity for action;
not that he might amuse himself, but that he might achieve glory. Nor did
he seek honors merely for himself; it was that he might share them with
others.
The first use Bonaparte made of his power after he was appointed
general-in-chief of the Army of the Interior, was for his family and
friends. Fifty or sixty thousand francs, assignats, and dresses go to his
mother and sisters; Joseph is to have a consulship; "a roof, a table, and
carriage" are at his disposal in Paris; Louis is made a lieutenant and his
aide-de-camp; Lucien, commissioner of war; Junot and Marmont are put on
his staff. He forgets nobody. The very day after the 13th Vendemiaire,
when his cares and excitements were numerous and intense, he was at the
Permon's, where Monsieur Permon had just died. "He was like a son, a
brother." This relation he soon tried to change, seeking to marry the
beautiful widow Permon. When she laughed merrily at the idea, for she was
many years his senior, he replied that the age of his wife was a matter of
indifference to him so long as she did not look over thirty.
The change in Bonaparte himself was great. Up to this time he had
gone about Paris "in an awkward and ungainly manner, with a shabby round
hat thrust down over his eyes, and with curls (known at that time as
oreilles des chiens) badly powdered and badly combed, and falling over the
collar of the iron-gray coat which has since become so celebrated; his
hands, long, thin, and black, without gloves, because, he said, they were
an unnecessary expense; wearing ill-made and ill-cleaned boots." The
majority of people saw in him only what Monsieur de Pontecoulant, who took
him into the War Office, had seen at their first interview; "A young man
with a wan and livid complexion, bowed shoulders, and a weak and sickly
appearance."
But now, installed in an elegant hotel, driving his own carriage,
careful of his person, received in every salon where he cared to go, the
young general-in-chief is a changed man. Success has had much to do with
this; love has perhaps had more.
